Resume review & advice. Part II of II. (read Part I)

Resume review actually consists of several different “layers” of consideration.

There are multiple factors that I consider simultaneously and all need to be accounted for before I make the decision to contact a candidate for a phone interview. What I’m looking for is a resume that “pops out" at me on multiple layers. 

The first thing that I look for when reviewing a resume, are the basics: does this candidate meet the minimum requirements for the position? Keep in mind, for many positions there are two sets of requirements – the bare minimum required – and the bonus qualifications that I’m ideally hoping to find. In this layer, I’m only looking for the former – but I’m militant in my resolve. If I need a year of experience, and you have six months – sorry, I just clicked “NEXT”.

More...

Warning- shameless plug ahead.....

I wanted to let you know about a resume workshop I led on Live Meeting a few weeks ago. If you are interested in learning about some of my favorite do’s and don’ts, then this is a great workshop to watch.  

The main topics in this workshop (it lasts around 50 minutes) are as follows:

1. 3 categories of a strong resume (work experience, education, projects and leadership)
   
2. How to get noticed in a crowd of resumes
   
3. Tips and Tricks

So, log-in and check out my workshop.  It's available online until March 2008.

I have to say it's pretty good.  Well, I am the host...but even if I wasn’t, I would still say it was good. A lot of the content is geared towards college students, but many of the main points cross over nicely to industry candidates. 

If that isn’t enough incentive for you to log in, here is one more reason—you can hear what I sound like!  I used my best radio voice.

- Janelle

By Janelle Godfrey 

Welcome to the next installment of my trials and tribulations of life with "Charlie", my younger brother who's a recent college graduate and who's living with me while he searches for his first real job. Thanks to everyone who has sent him words of encouragement; he had two more interviews last week and with each feels that he's getting more confident with his interview skills (while more depressed with his hit rate).  He’s great inspiration for my blogs – and here’s the issue he posed to me last week.  GPA. 

GPA = Grade Point Average.  That dreaded number that you spend four years (or five, in my case) stressing about keeping as high as you possibly can.  It’s a number that seems to take an eternity to get larger when you get a great grade, but then falls so quickly if you get a C on your midterm.  It just doesn’t seem like the grades are weighted the same.

I used to spend many sleepless nights stressing over my grades, hoping that I would 4.0 a class or that my lowest test score would be thrown out.  I can remember the joy and jubilation I felt when I finished school with my GPA above a 3.5.  I was so excited!  So much so, that every job I applied for, I’d ask “Would you like a copy of my transcript?”  I just knew it would be the extra reason for my getting that dream job. 

Sadly though, every time I asked that question, the recruiter would say, “No thanks.” 

WHAT???  But I had panic attacks and lost sleep for those grades!  And you don’t even want to see them?

Well, it turns out that I learned what many college grads learn the hard way.  More often than not, your GPA is really only good for getting you into grad schools and for getting scholarships.  Bummer, I know.  It’s hard to hear.  Granted, there are MANY companies that do really focus on GPA, in addition to other factors like which school you graduated from.  There are even a lot of people at Microsoft who look at GPA.  For them, if your GPA is below a certain number, that will always be wrapped into the first question they ask.

As someone who was proud of her GPA, I put it on everything.  I would put it in my cover letters, I would put it on thank you notes, and I probably would have put it on my credit card if that option was available.  And now, watching Charlie struggle with his job search and this issue, I’ve been inspired to share three really important points about GPAs and finding jobs.

1. If your GPA is below a 3.0… do NOT put it on your resume.

Now you might be really proud of your GPA, but if you don’t want to have a discussion about it with a recruiter or interviewer, then just omit it from your resume.  Remember, recruiters and interviewers SKIM resumes, so often a number like that will just pop off the page.  Maybe you’re proud of where your grades tallied at the end of the day which is great, but if you don’t want your first interview question to be, “What happened with your low GPA?” then just leave the number off of your resume.  But remember, of course, don’t lie.  If a recruiter asks you what your GPA is, then tell them.  You never know if they’ll ask to see your transcript later on in the process. 

2.  If you did really well in your major but not in your additional classes, then go ahead and put your MAJOR GPA on your resume. 

For instance, if you spent your first two years struggling to register for classes in your major, (shout out to the University of Washington for making me take Intro to Dinosaurs, Latin Word Roots, and English Medieval Classics my first two years of college) but you were a rock star when it came to your final two years in your actual major, then just put that on your resume.  Be prepared though, someone may ask you what your overall GPA was as well.  But if you want to brag about something, then your major GPA is a fine choice.

3. Experience is more important than GPA.  

This is the key lesson that Charlie learned this week.  He had been so focused on getting good grades, he spent his summers in summer school instead of finding an internship.  This is hurting him now.  Although his grades are good and he has taken all of the key classes for his field of interest, recruiters are asking him, “Other than experience in class and in group projects, what outside marketing experience do you have?”  And this is when an internship would have served him well. 

So if your grades are good, and you have a choice…. TAKE A JOB!  It will set you apart from other candidates who just have course work to talk about and that you are competing with.

While Charlie can't go back in time and make a different choice between getting more experience or working harder in his major, it may not be too late for the rest of you out there.  Thanks for reading and keep your fingers crossed that my next blog will be titled “Apartment hunting tips for the younger brother who just got a job and will now be vacating his sister’s apartment”.

- Janelle

By Elizabeth Hoogs

In the last three weeks, I have been to as many schools and as many career fairs.  I just finished the Fall Career Fair at University of Wisconsin Madison, and after shaking hands and collecting resumes, I have a stack of candidates who stood out to me and my colleagues as passionate, smart, and will be invited for first round interviews.  So what did they do right?

Career Fairs are brutal.  You poor students wonder among the booths, weave your way through the crowds, resumes in hand, trying to catch the eye of a recruiter.  Your job is to communicate your interests and impress me in a very short period of time.  Here are a few tips on being noticed (in a good way;-)).

1. Come Prepared with a resume:
Please come with a resume, preferably 1 page, 1 side.  If you are going to have a 2+ page resume, please staple the two pages.  I will often get back to the office with a single, nameless second page.  Please make sure the contact information and grad date are up to date on your resume. 

2. Do quick research on the companies you plan to visit:
Most Career Service Centers will post which companies will be attending the fairs.  By spending a few minutes on each of your targeted companies, you will learn about the opportunities they offer.  This helps you highlight your skills relevant to those positions while speaking to the recruiter and you stand out as a driven candidate.  Knowing what you want is really important to us; it’s often not just about what you can do, but what you want to do. 

3. Tell me about yourself, not your resume:
We love the opportunity to speak with students and get beyond the resume.  Try to emphasize what you’re passionate about doing and back it up with examples of what you’ve done, but do not read from your resume.  Take the opportunity to tell the recruiter about your passions, interests, and how they can be realized at their company and trust that they will look at your resume in depth later. 

Of course, skill level, which positions are open or not, and your talent are the primary determining factors, but these might help you showcase your potential match for a given company.  I hope these can help you increase your success and that you hear from many companies!

Liz

Since I blog for Microsoft, I should likely hide my loyalty to the trendy music player with the trademark white earphones, but the truth is - I love it. And I love downloading podcasts - not just because they are free, but because they cover every topic imaginable. I load up on podcasts about travel, business, celebrity gossip, and of course knitting. But did all of you jobseekers know there are endless podcasts about interviewing? I'm not going to plug any specific ones, but any quick search will deliver you sessions on writing great resumes, interviewing and negotiating salaries.

Some of you longtime readers might remember our JobCasts which Gretchen recorded.  And of course, my man Shally Steckerl (recruiting research manager at Microsoft) has a bunch of them out there, too.  Our very own Jim Stroud also records a podcast for recruiters called the Recruiter's Lounge.

So load 'em up, play them on "shuffle" and you can brush up on your interviewing while listening to your favorite tunes.

Jenna

I get hundreds of resumes a week; some are thoughtful and intelligent, but many are a notch above SPAM. What makes the difference junk and jewels? I asked one recently hired JobsBlog reader -Troy Schauls -  how he went about contacting someone he did not know (me) about a job in my division. I’ll give you a big hint:  it is all about his customized and well thought out email to me which guided his resume through the labyrinth of my inbox and into the hands of my interviewing team. 

The rest of Troy’s advice (in his own words) is here:  

Key Lessons:

1) Despite the rumors to the contrary, cover letters matter. Make it concise and make sure it contains something "remarkable." Be bold and don't be afraid to show what it is that gets you out of bed in the morning or keeps you from it at night.

2) Do your homework, then turn it in. Spend some time figuring out who exactly you need to contact and give it a try. I mean find a specific name if you can. Then be respectful of the recruiter's attention. I'm not sure where I read it but one of you guys (you, Gretchen, Zoe or maybe) said somewhere that if you send a resume, take the time to register on the careers site before you send it. I was aware that I was walking in off the street, so to speak, so I better make it as easy as possible for you to "process" me if you liked what I had to say.

3) Keep an open mind. Even though I was not a great fit with the first team I talked to, there were great opportunities that I didn't originally anticipate.

4) It is a pretty hard climb, but worth it at the top. This was one of the more rigorous interview processes I've been through. But my advice is to try to have fun with it. Hang in there. Keep "fighting" if you like what you hear during the process. Make sure you ask at a couple of open ended questions to each of your interviewers so you can get an impression of the job, team, culture and who your interviewers are as people.

 Welcome Aboard, Troy!  

--Jenna

By Priya Priyadarshini

Been a while since I posted anything, hopefully you are eagerly awaiting my second publication.

I have been thinking about it for a while and could not decide on a theme or topic for this blog. I thought that the readers deserve more insight into the international recruiting.

I have received multiple questions and email regarding how do we hire international talent; what are we looking for and how can we help the candidates better prepare for the interviews?  The international recruiting process is pretty much similar to the recruitment that happens on campus.

I would recommend candidates to submit a well written resume that is up-to-date.  Applicants should ensure that they have clearly mentioned all their education details, including if the program that they attended is a 4 yr or a  5 yr, their grade, GPA, rank.

Having a valid and active email id, phone number including country code and area code are very helpful. Make sure they mention the city and country they are currently residing in. 

It is amazing how resumes from different parts of the world are so different. In the US, I have never seen a resume with marital status, number of family members and a colored picture of the candidate, but in some parts of the world, this very common practice and the other parts of the world it is mandatory.  This is to let our international candidates know that we do not require personal information on their marital status, their picture or details of their driving license. However, it certainly does not dampen your chances of getting selected.

A well written resume is your stepping stone to reach into good hands, and from that point, the recruiter will try to contact you by email/phone to schedule a phone appointment. In most cases due to the nature of the international trips, you can expect to appear for a phone interview on a very short notice.

So it will be good for the candidates to follow a standard system and format for sending a resume that captures the details of their key job experience and major projects they have worked on.

Once you succeed in impressing the recruiter by your resume, the next step is to clear the phone interviews. The phone interviews can be very different based on the region. In some cases we will conduct live meetings and expect candidates to write code; whereas in other cases, we can just chat with them and ask them questions about their resume and their job and try to assess basic core competencies. One big tip that is helpful is try to always provide a land line number if you can as the connection is much better and the line is clearer on both ends.  The interview can be more effective without having international calls drop every 5 minutes, and the recruiter having to call you again and again. I must add here that it is not easy for the recruiter or interviewer to conduct these phone interviews and make decisions when the phone connectivity is poor or it takes them 4 times before they finally get the dial tone and they are calling at odd hours to ensure that it is an OK time for the candidates to interview in their local time zones.

It is a good idea to brush up on basic c, c++, java, c# skills before doing a phone interview; usually the questions on the phone are very straight forward and simple.  I have seen a vast majority of candidates who appear for these interviews are very nervous (nothing unusual here). I remember how I was profusely sweating and was struggling for words to complete my sentences, and at the end I kicked myself and said, "I can’t believe what I just did!”

In the interview you can expect questions related to MS products, technologies that you have worked on, details on your project work etc. If you have prepared well, do well and are lucky enough, you may get an email from the International team inviting you for in person interviews. These in person interviews take place outside the USA in various countries and so you will be invited to the one closest to your location.

Please note that Microsoft pays all the travel expense, arranges travel and lodging. Some of the hotels where candidates get to stay are pretty neat!

Then comes the day when you meet with the hiring team in person and you go through multiple interviews where they are trying to evaluate you on core competencies, your technical skills, coding, testing, design etc.  This link would be helpful for you in getting an understanding of what we are looking for and how that aligns with our mission, vision and values. 

The international team has been very responsive and quick in getting back to candidates with the results of the final interview. Then you will receive a follow-up call where the recruiter will explain to you the offer in detail and send you the Offer letter. They will also work with the legal team to get you a visa to work here and come to the USA.

The visa is another story in its own. Over the past couple of years it has become extremely difficult for companies to hire international talent because of the limited number of H1bs.  So please understand that Microsoft and your recruiter will try everything in their capacity to apply for your visa, but there are no guarantees and sometimes you might have to wait for an extra year before you can come here. I will write about this in more detail in a follow-up post.

I am looking forward to all sorts of feedback, the good, the bad and the ugly :-)

Let me know what else you would like to see here and know about.

Cheers,
Priya

By Janelle Godfrey

I’ve been asked recently by some candidates what recruiters ACTUALLY look for when screening a resume. I have worked on both sides of the fence:  I spent several years working at the Career Center for MBAs at the University of Washington, assisting students in how to make their resumes POP, and now I find myself on the other side, looking for something that POPS out of a stack of hundreds of resumes.

Let me first say that every recruiter is different; I can only tell you what I look for. Hopefully some of these tips will help you better understand how your experience and skills can translate into getting that highly desired contact from a recruiter.

1.  Keep a constant log of what you do: This may sound silly, but trust me; it’s hard to keep track of everything that you have done in school when it’s occurring in real time. I have always kept a word document of great things I have done ... i.e. an ongoing list of projects, classes, ideas, deliverables, etc that I have been a part of.  This way, when you are looking for ideas, you have a running tab of things that you have worked on. It’s hard to think of things when you are stressed looking for a job; this way you have it all in one place. For instance, when I worked at Expedia on our referral program, I wrote a paragraph about what I did, who it affected, and what the results were. Then when I was looking for a job that required that kind of experience, I was able to stick in a great bullet point in my resume that matched what they were looking for (it also helps on job interview questions. look to this list before any interview and you will easily be able to look back on all you accomplished).

2.  Results:  Everyone has bullet points on their resume (i.e. “Created new programming tool for current team) … but what many people forget is the results of this. Try something like “Created new programming tool for team THAT RESULTED IN"… and say what happened from it. Think more about how you impacted your environments and less about just the basic facts of what you did. Your resume should be about accomplishments and not just a laundry list that reads like a job description.

3.  Consider your audience:  I like to tell students to have several different copies of resumes that correlate to the jobs that they are looking for. You shouldn’t just have one general resume if you have a million different types of experience. The best resumes are those that aren’t five pages. Maybe you have done a lot; maybe you are a PhD and have published 20 different articles … If the job you are applying for doesn’t care, then it’s okay to leave some things out. If you are applying for an IT job and a dev job, then you should have two different resumes that can highlight your experience for each. Whatever gets your point across is always a safe bet.

4.  Proofing by a stranger: When I was working for the MBA program, I heard a statistic … when applying for a job, you should assume that each person who looks at your resume looks at it for an average of 40 seconds … Although I can tell you that I do look at resumes longer, sometimes it’s that first look that really decides someone’s fate. A great way to help you understand how the overall message of your resume reads is by finding a stranger ... find someone in one of your classes or in your department that doesn’t know you. Ask them if they would look at your resume for 40 seconds; then have them flip the paper over and write down the top 3 things they learned about you. This is a great indicator of what others see when they look at your resume. If they say something like, “Where you went to school, your major, and your first job title,” that’s great! If someone can’t get over some bizarre fact or typo in your resume, it’s a safe assumption that recruiters will notice the same thing.

5.  Don’t write checks that you can’t cash:  We have all been in a situation where we need to make ourselves feel more important than we actually were ... a document such as a resume is not the place to do this… make sure that what you put on your resume can be questioned. The worst feeling that a candidate can experience is having to back track on their resume. Let’s say you wrote on your resume that you were the Program Manager for a release during an internship and that you managed all of the other interns during the summer. If you are in an interview and someone asks you your role and you have to say, “well, I never really managed but I was the lead,” then say it, and state how you made the project better. Don’t make up facts; the truth is more impressive because you can confidently speak about it. It’s better to build yourself up in an interview when questioned than have the rug pulled out from under you while caught up in a story.

Well, those are my 5 cents; I hope they shed some light in resume writing. If you have any other questions, I am open to helping you out. I love seeing people able to not only achieve their potential and greatness but also write about it on a resume, with great results.

-Janelle